COMMUNITY EFFORT

The best way of organizing collaboration on the Web is with a Wiki. Mediawiki, the Wiki behind the famous Wikipedia project, sets the standard for web-based collaboration tools.

Wiki fans will be familiar with the scenario: you spot a typo on a website and drag the mouse around the screen vainly searching for the edit button. Until the inception of the Wiki principle, it was considered unthinkable for any visitor to be able to edit a Website. But now, projects like the free encyclopedia, Wikipedia [1], clearly demonstrate the viability of a collaborative effort involving thousands of volunteers. Many business and open source projects have put Wikis to effective use in areas such as software documentation, or simply as a means for organizing documents on an enterprise intranet. If you are interested in setting up your own Wiki, you are spoiled for choice. You’ll find over 50 Wiki engines in a variety of programming languages. Mediawiki [2], the software that Wikipedia uses, is a Wiki tool that has proven its value for over two years in a permanent production situation. This trial by fire has allowed Mediawiki developers to quickly discover and remove vulnerabilities, making Mediawiki one of the most stable and well tested Wiki options.